UK and Europe will both survive Brexit, says Catalan president

The UK and the European Union will adapt and survive if there is a Brexit, the Catalan president has said, denouncing the Remain camp’s “campaign of fear” as patronising and “almost infantile”.

Carles Puigdemont, who is spearheading Catalonia’s drive for independence from Spain, dismissed warnings of disaster, saying the European Union had an amazing capacity to adapt to changing situations.

“Nothing’s going to happen if the UK decides to leave, it’s only going to leave,” he told the Telegraph. “The streetlights are going to work, the people will go to their jobs, and most of all, and what we most want, if this is the decision of the British, we will adjust ourselves to this reality.”

Mr Puigdemont took office in January on a mandate of independence for the region and has been closely watching the British referendum. He said that while Europe tended to resist such upheaval, realpolitik ultimately won out.

The Catalan leader raised the example of Slovenian independence from Yugoslavia, saying that right up until 1991 the European Union warned that it would not be recognised as a state, but it was now an active and appreciated member of the bloc.

“This is what would happen … they are going to adapt to circumstances that they don’t like at all, and obviously they don’t like in the European Union for there to be shocks of any kind, not a referendum in Great Britain, nor a referendum in Catalonia, but they adapt, and at an admirable speed.”

Mr Puigdemont likened apocalyptic warnings from the Remain campaign to those propagated by Madrid as it tries to prevent a referendum in Catalonia. The government of Mariano Rajoy has consistently refused to allow any form of consultation vote, though the defiant Catalan leadership used regional elections in September last year as a de facto referendum, with pro-independence parties winning a parliamentary majority.

Pro-independence supporters at a rally in BarcelonaCredit:
Emilio Morenatti/AP

Like the Remain campaign in the UK, the Madrid government invoked “all the Biblical plagues” ahead of that September vote, Mr Puigdemont said. Such “campaigns of fear” are based on the premise that “the electorate is stupid, and that the citizens can’t decide for themselves”, he argued.

“This is a serious offense to all the citizens, who have the same right to decide if they want to leave the European Union, or to stay," the Catalan leader said. "And to treat those who want to come out of the European Union as if they were underage minors who can be scared with some exaggeration, or some lie, this is almost an offense. The people have to be treated with maturity, they can understand the arguments of one camp and the other, rationally.”

The idea that Europe would turn its back on the UK in the event of a Brexit, or that the UK would turn its back on the world, was “almost infantile”, he said, and ultimately a counterproductive form of campaigning.

The Catalan leader said his government did not take a position on Britain’s EU membership, saying both sides had valid arguments and the decision of the British people must be respected.

But he stressed that his independence movement was pro-Europe in character and wanted to remain part of the bloc, albeit one that was not centralised and respected the sovereignty of member states. The British referendum, he said, could open up a useful debate on the future shape of Europe.

The prospect that an independent Catalonia would be expelled by the EU was widely floated by opponents of secession ahead of last September’s vote. While officially, the Commission has remained silent on the matter, the mood music in Brussels has not been positive, in part due to the dogged opposition of a powerful member state.

Mr Puigdemont said the Commission’s differing positions on Brexit and on Catalan independence were “paradoxical”.

The EU was tying itself in knots to keep Britain in the EU, but on the other hand wanted to expel a dynamic economy that represents two per cent of European GDP and is home to the major business hub of Barcelona, he said.

“How does it make sense that the same entity of the European Union makes desperate efforts to keep the UK and doesn’t make any efforts to keep an economy like Catalonia? Well it is evident, this explains why they still haven’t put out any official opinion,” Mr Puigdemont said.